Phonotactics is the boring CVC. Long vowels only appear in open syllables. Obstruents are devoiced syllable-finally.

Verbs code: TAM, evidentiality, and agree: subject and object persons and genders.
I'll test having no nonfinite verb forms. So there will be subjunctives, conditional moods, relative moods etc.
Some kind of incorporation will appear, either the object can be combined with the verb or there are very many productive derivational affixes that can be added to all nouns.

Nouns have three genders: masculine, feminine, and plural.
I still haven's used the case system of Direct, Genitive, Essive, and Locative enough.

Last edited by Omzinesý on 30 Jul 2019 22:54, edited 2 times in total.

The only allowed consonant clusters consist of two obstruents with the same MOA (pt, gd, mn ...). The first one does not have an own explosion.
A semivowel /w, j <y>) can however appear between a consonant and a vowel.
"pkyamn" is thus an allowed syllable.

Every sonorant has a prestopped pair. The prestopped consonants are considered single consonants. They cannot appear syllable-finally.
Phonetic rules

Syllable-final obstruents devoice.
ma.ga + na => mak.na

Semivowels (w, j <y>) are also devoiced word-finally to [ʍ] and [ç] respectively.

It's about coding personal authority over the information; in the classical case being personal knowledge by the subject. The characteristic egophoric pattern is that you mark the 1st person in applicable declarative clauses and the 2nd person in questions, meaning that you anticipate your addressee to have personal authority over the answer. 3rd person egophorics can appear in reported speech.

@Omzinesý: If you've come up with a more detailed description of the behaviour of your evidential/egophoric system, it would be lovely to read it.

It's about coding personal authority over the information; in the classical case being personal knowledge by the subject. The characteristic egophoric pattern is that you mark the 1st person in applicable declarative clauses and the 2nd person in questions, meaning that you anticipate your addressee to have personal authority over the answer. 3rd person egophorics can appear in reported speech.

@Omzinesý: If you've come up with a more detailed description of the behaviour of your evidential/egophoric system, it would be lovely to read it.

That is basically what I know about it now. I'm going to concentrate on morphology in this lang. Morphology is the hardest part for me. So it is possible that there will be no better description of egophoricity for this lang.
The problem with egophoricity and morphology is that I don't know any language with both egophoricity marking and subject person agreement. Typologically they are distinct phenomena but I have no exemplars of natlangs.

The problem with egophoricity and morphology is that I don't know any language with both egophoricity marking and subject person agreement. Typologically they are distinct phenomena but I have no exemplars of natlangs.

They usually don't occur together and egophoric marking certainly can develop from person marking. However, there are a few counterexamples to this pattern, which you could look into.

The problem with egophoricity and morphology is that I don't know any language with both egophoricity marking and subject person agreement. Typologically they are distinct phenomena but I have no exemplars of natlangs.

They usually don't occur together and egophoric marking certainly can develop from person marking. However, there are a few counterexamples to this pattern, which you could look into.

Nice there are such languages. Thank you.
It seems in the language you linked there is thought a simple agglutinative morphology. I would suppose sg1 should be unmarked beside egophoricity marking and sg3 beside sensory marking.
Actually I think egophoricity markers usually develop from existential copulae. But it's some years since I have read about them.

Actually I think egophoricity markers usually develop from existential copulae. But it's some years since I have read about them.

That's true for Tibetan at least, but I wouldn't know how wide that typology extends beyond it. At least in Bunan egophoric marking developed from the reanalysis of person marking. I have a gut feeling that deriving egophoric marking should actually be reasonably justifiable from quite a few sources. In addition to person marking and existentials, I wouldn't be too surprised to see it derived from evidentials, intensifiers, or periphrastic conjugation.

Actually I think egophoricity markers usually develop from existential copulae. But it's some years since I have read about them.

That's true for Tibetan at least, but I wouldn't know how wide that typology extends beyond it. At least in Bunan egophoric marking developed from the reanalysis of person marking. I have a gut feeling that deriving egophoric marking should actually be reasonably justifiable from quite a few sources. In addition to person marking and existentials, I wouldn't be too surprised to see it derived from evidentials, intensifiers, or periphrastic conjugation.

Transitive Egophoric inflection
In all other persons but 1st, the conjugation are alike with Sensory conjugation but Egophoric marker -y is added and the vowel is short.
In 1st person, the epistemic marker is -e, and what are intransitive subject markers now mark transitive object.

In imperatives, would first-person egophoricity be a for-real imperative, and second-person egophoricity be a request?

Very few languages have first person imperatives.
Imperatives are non-factual, by definition, so I think expressing epistemic authority (or any other epistemic category) over information on an action that still has not been done is redundant.

Maybe egophoric imperative could be stronger than a non-egophoric, if the same categories are utilized in imperatives too.

I would have thought that with a first-person-egophoric imperative the speaker might be asserting control over the addressee,
while with a second-person-egophoric imperative the speaker might be yielding control to the addressee.

In both cases I was thinking 2nd-person imperative; that is, the person being commanded or requested would be the addressee.

I hadn’t considered 1st-person-inclusive dual-or-plural imperatives, where the entity being commanded or requested is a group containing both the speaker and the addressee (and maybe someone else?).

But what would it mean for that kind of imperative to have 1st person egophoticity, or second-person egophoricity, or third-person egophoricity?

—————

Are you sure egophoricity has to do only with epistemic moods/modes/modalities? Could it not also have something to do with deontic moods/modes/modalities? Or alethic moods/modes/modalities?

If it doesn’t in any natlang, why couldn’t it still in some conlang? Maybe you don’t want it in this conlang, but maybe you think it might work out in another conlang.

——————

Would “Bismillah” or “Inshallah” or “if God wills it” or “as God wills” or “God wills it”, be third-person-egophoricity?
Or would “God only knows” be a better candidate or illustration of third-person egophoricity?

So you think there could be three kinds of egophoricity, 1) speaker having epistemic authority, 2) addressee having epistemic authority, and 3) somebody else having epistemic authority.

First, I think it shouldn't be called egophoricity. "Ego" means "I" anyways. (tu-phoricity?)
Second, what would be their functions. Apparently, if I tell what you think, you have the epistemic authority over your thoughts, but if I report them I cannot borrow your epistemic authority. It's rather the quotative evidential - one whose source is known.

Like I said, egophoricity usually has a role in assertions and questions. Maybe, it could distinguish commands and requests, requests having some other epistemic marker but EGO, and it would surely be deontic modality rather than an epistemic category.
If I remember correctly, modality is defined as the speakers stance to the proposition. Evidentiality is thus not considered epistemic modality because the source of information is a kind of objective fact. Theoretically it could be closer to alethic modality. I dunno.

I think the FACT marker is much more interesting than egophoricity with respect to your ideas. It's an epistemic category whose source of information doesn't have to be stated because "everybody knows". It's not a theorethical idea, but appaers in many languages that also have egophoricity.
So apparently the addressee also knows. It could make interesting imperatives. "It's a fact that you should make your homework."

Five cases
- Direct (The case of subjects and arguments)
- Exclamative (The case of language-external topics/subjects that appear in the context of the speech partners, and the case of exclamations like "Look, an airplane!".)
- Genitive (Maybe will also have the dative function as well, I'm not sure.)
- Locative/Oblique (The case expressing place, time, and manner. Usually adjuncts. I'm not sure if (Anti-)Passive will have it as the case of by-arguments.)
- Essive (The case of predicatives, either with a copular verb or without it)

Specificness will probably be coded in the verb, syntax, or just "context".

The language has a split alignment so that the perfect (which does not equal perfective) has an absolutive-ergative alingment while the other tense/aspects have a nominative-accusative alignment. Morpholologically, there is though no difference between Nominative and Accusative. The difference is syntactic and lexical.

Verbs in non-perfect forms have two person paradigms coding Transitive and Intransitive. The Transitive paradigm presupposes an object, so môkpiĝ means 'I killed him' instead of just 'I killed'. All transitive verbs can be intrantivized and made unergative by using the Intransitive paradigm. môkpi means 'I killed (something)'. There is also a passive form môkpaĝ 'He got killed'.

Verbs in the perfect differ in that they only code the patient. môkpaň 'He is killed.' The agent can be coded be an Ergative preposition. Lom môkpaň 'I have killed him.' whose more literal translation is 'By-me he is killed.'